Course: People and Literature Unit: Poetry and Social Change
Unit Objective: To read and analyze poetry in its personal, social, and political contexts.
Major Understandings: Poetry as artistic and literary expression; Poetry’s effects on social and political change; Poets and their personal histories.
Skills: Reading comprehension (poetry and non-fiction); creative thinking & writing; using background knowledge; making connections and predictions; context clues; paraphrasing; oral and written summaries; internet searching; interviewing, memorizing. Whole class, individual, and small group work.
Special Needs Accommodations: IEP and AIS teachers modify assignments and assessments as needed. Collaborate with IEP and AIS teachers to create extra study guides and materials as needed. Assistance in choosing appropriate reading materials. Accommodations for audio-taping and listening for auditory learners. Guided and collaborative reading when appropriate. Assistance in pacing and goal setting.
Assessment: Based on multiple intelligences and abilities of the student. Class participation. Research (presented in various formats such as an essay, poster, paper, Power Point presentation, original web page, original text/image collage, iMovie, or a combination of these). Ability to work in a group. Long-range planning and implementation. Evaluations are based on personal goals and rubrics, and student-teacher conferences throughout the unit (not only at the end of the unit).
Middle Grades/High School variations: In general, HS students will be expected to take part in goal-setting for the class, showing higher-order thinking skills (interpreting, analyzing, summarizing, synthesizing, evaluating, co-teaching and discussion-leading), and in showing a mature & responsible manner in group interactions, such as political discussion.
Name of Lesson: “The Prison Cell,” by Mahmoud Darwish
Focus Question: “Is poetry capable of changing the way people treat one another?” (students can answer this in journals, then discuss)
Materials: Copy of the poem “The Prison Cell,” writing journals, pens or pencils. Lesson: Session 1 – Opening up the poem as a text. Understanding meaning by connecting with the emotion of the poem. 1) Read-aloud. The teacher reads the poem aloud once. Keep discussion at a minimum for now (questions will follow the initial creative activity). Ask students to read it aloud, taking turns.
2) Creative writing. Ask: “What imprisons you?” (possible answers: growing up poor, other peoples’ ideas about the role of women in society, feelings of abandonment or loneliness) Ask students to create a list in their journals of the ways they might feel imprisoned. Students can then share ideas with the class.
3) Ask: “What are some things that make you feel free, things or activities that you love? List them in your journals. Note how specific Darwish gets – he names the river, he tells where the wine is from. Be specific - the smile on the face of my baby cousin, or the smell of lavender.” Share lists with class.
4) Darwish starts the poem by saying : “It is possible…” In journals, have students begin to write, following the poem’s structure in the second stanza:
It is possible for (what to disappear? contempt for the poor? my feelings of loneliness?) For the cell to become (the face of a loved one? a field of lavender?)
For example: It is possible For your feelings of disrespect for my poverty To disappear, For the cell to become A field of lavender in Provence…
5) Students who wish to share can read their stanzas to the class.
6) Similar activity can be done, modeled on the question/answer stanzas, depending on students’ lists. Dialogue between oppressor and liberated.
7) Homework or in-class written work (depending on class length): Questions about “The Prison Cell”
*
Lesson: Session 2 – Social and political context: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
1) Return to the focus question from session 1. Why did I ask if you thought poetry was capable of changing the way we treat one another. What do you think now? (various answers – reflect on the empathy the poet shows toward the guard)
2) If we don’t know anything about the poet’s life, can we still grasp the meaning of “The Prison Cell”? (yes) Does it help our understanding to know more about the poet and his background? (various answers – some students may say the poem should “stand alone” outside the political & social realm) For example: why is the author of the poem in prison? (we don’t know) Can we figure it out? Look at the two stanzas in the poem, lines 17-20 and lines 30-33. What is happening? (the prison guard says he doesn’t like poetry, then he says he doesn’t like Darwish’s poetry) Why doesn’t he like Darwish’s poetry? (because it suggests the possibility for change; it allows the poet to “escape”) Is it possible that others didn’t like Darwish’s poems? (yes) Explain. (he may have been imprisoned for his political speech)
3) Hand out the Darwish obituaries to each student. In order to find out more about the poet and his background, divide the class into smaller groups, giving each one a large sheet of paper from the pad and colored markers. Ask them to read the obituary aloud to each other, which tells more about Mahmoud Darwish’s life. If students want to go to another space with their group, that is ok. Each group should come back with 3-4 points written down: these could be points of information, questions, passages in the obituary that moved them emotionally, etc. Decorate the sheet of paper as they see fit. Class should come back together in 30-45 minutes.
4) Share the new information the students have gathered about Darwish by posting the large sheets of paper on the walls of the room. What do we now know about Darwish’s life? About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? How can we find out more about this conflict? Notice the emotions, preconceptions, etc. that the students may express about the conflict, which may be a function of the various cultural identities of the students in the class. Discuss how to separate facts from opinions.
5) Homework: Discuss what you have learned about the poem, Mahmoud Darwish, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at home with parents or caregivers. Other settings are fine (family groups, project time). Where do your sympathies lie? Your family’s? Friends? Why do people hold the opinions that they do? Reflect on why the conflict over Palestine is important to us in the United States and others around the world.
*
Lesson: Session 3 – Exploration in Depth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Possible resources:
1) Internet exploration. Information is vast and often based on opinion. 2) Project Look Sharp’s Kit: Media Construction of the Middle East - Unit Two: Israel and Palestine http://www.ithaca.edu/looksharp/?action=middleeast
Possibilities for other Lessons: “Poetry and Social Change”**
Geography connections: find the places mentioned in the poem on Google Earth or on a world map.
Discuss: Literary theme. Discuss what the poem means. A theme is an idea about the human experience, not a single word like “freedom.” For example, the theme may be best stated as: “If our minds are free, human-made prisons cannot suppress or contain our imaginations.”
Class activity: Whole-class memorization of “The Prison Cell” with emphasis on the pleasure of memorization and recitation. School wide activities: Performance of poem for the school; creation of poetry wall in school hallway consisting of favorite poems of students & teachers; students help teacher post poems in lockers & faculty mailboxes.
Poetry in Translation: Students translate the work of poets from their native country or ethnic heritage, then write and translate their own poems. Cross-disciplinary potential with foreign language teaching staff.
Unit: Poetry and Social Change
Unit Objective: To read and analyze poetry in its personal, social, and political contexts.
Major Understandings: Poetry as artistic and literary expression; Poetry’s effects on social and political change; Poets and their personal histories.
Skills: Reading comprehension (poetry and non-fiction); creative thinking & writing; using background knowledge; making connections and predictions; context clues; paraphrasing; oral and written summaries; internet searching; interviewing, memorizing. Whole class, individual, and small group work.
Special Needs Accommodations: IEP and AIS teachers modify assignments and assessments as needed. Collaborate with IEP and AIS teachers to create extra study guides and materials as needed. Assistance in choosing appropriate reading materials. Accommodations for audio-taping and listening for auditory learners. Guided and collaborative reading when appropriate. Assistance in pacing and goal setting.
Assessment: Based on multiple intelligences and abilities of the student. Class participation. Research (presented in various formats such as an essay, poster, paper, Power Point presentation, original web page, original text/image collage, iMovie, or a combination of these). Ability to work in a group. Long-range planning and implementation. Evaluations are based on personal goals and rubrics, and student-teacher conferences throughout the unit (not only at the end of the unit).
Middle Grades/High School variations: In general, HS students will be expected to take part in goal-setting for the class, showing higher-order thinking skills (interpreting, analyzing, summarizing, synthesizing, evaluating, co-teaching and discussion-leading), and in showing a mature & responsible manner in group interactions, such as political discussion.
Name of Lesson: “The Prison Cell,” by Mahmoud Darwish
Focus Question: “Is poetry capable of changing the way people treat one another?” (students can answer this in journals, then discuss)
Materials: Copy of the poem “The Prison Cell,” writing journals, pens or pencils.
Lesson: Session 1 – Opening up the poem as a text. Understanding meaning by connecting with the emotion of the poem.
1) Read-aloud. The teacher reads the poem aloud once. Keep discussion at a minimum for now (questions will follow the initial creative activity). Ask students to read it aloud, taking turns.
2) Creative writing. Ask: “What imprisons you?” (possible answers: growing up poor, other peoples’ ideas about the role of women in society, feelings of abandonment or loneliness)
Ask students to create a list in their journals of the ways they might feel imprisoned. Students can then share ideas with the class.
3) Ask: “What are some things that make you feel free, things or activities that you love? List them in your journals. Note how specific Darwish gets – he names the river, he tells where the wine is from. Be specific - the smile on the face of my baby cousin, or the smell of lavender.” Share lists with class.
4) Darwish starts the poem by saying : “It is possible…”
In journals, have students begin to write, following the poem’s structure in the second stanza:
It is possible for (what to disappear? contempt for the poor? my feelings of loneliness?)
For the cell to become (the face of a loved one? a field of lavender?)
For example:
It is possible
For your feelings of disrespect for my poverty
To disappear,
For the cell to become
A field of lavender in Provence…
5) Students who wish to share can read their stanzas to the class.
6) Similar activity can be done, modeled on the question/answer stanzas, depending on students’ lists. Dialogue between oppressor and liberated.
7) Homework or in-class written work (depending on class length): Questions about “The Prison Cell”
*
Lesson: Session 2 – Social and political context: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Materials from Session 1, and also the handout - obituary of Mahmoud Darwish from The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/11/poetry.israelandthepalestinians
Large pad of lined paper, colored markers.
Discuss:
1) Return to the focus question from session 1. Why did I ask if you thought poetry was capable of changing the way we treat one another. What do you think now? (various answers – reflect on the empathy the poet shows toward the guard)
2) If we don’t know anything about the poet’s life, can we still grasp the meaning of “The Prison Cell”? (yes)
Does it help our understanding to know more about the poet and his background? (various answers – some students may say the poem should “stand alone” outside the political & social realm)
For example: why is the author of the poem in prison? (we don’t know) Can we figure it out? Look at the two stanzas in the poem, lines 17-20 and lines 30-33. What is happening? (the prison guard says he doesn’t like poetry, then he says he doesn’t like Darwish’s poetry)
Why doesn’t he like Darwish’s poetry? (because it suggests the possibility for change; it allows the poet to “escape”)
Is it possible that others didn’t like Darwish’s poems? (yes)
Explain. (he may have been imprisoned for his political speech)
3) Hand out the Darwish obituaries to each student. In order to find out more about the poet and his background, divide the class into smaller groups, giving each one a large sheet of paper from the pad and colored markers. Ask them to read the obituary aloud to each other, which tells more about Mahmoud Darwish’s life. If students want to go to another space with their group, that is ok. Each group should come back with 3-4 points written down: these could be points of information, questions, passages in the obituary that moved them emotionally, etc. Decorate the sheet of paper as they see fit. Class should come back together in 30-45 minutes.
4) Share the new information the students have gathered about Darwish by posting the large sheets of paper on the walls of the room. What do we now know about Darwish’s life? About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? How can we find out more about this conflict? Notice the emotions, preconceptions, etc. that the students may express about the conflict, which may be a function of the various cultural identities of the students in the class. Discuss how to separate facts from opinions.
5) Homework: Discuss what you have learned about the poem, Mahmoud Darwish, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at home with parents or caregivers. Other settings are fine (family groups, project time). Where do your sympathies lie? Your family’s? Friends? Why do people hold the opinions that they do? Reflect on why the conflict over Palestine is important to us in the United States and others around the world.
*
Lesson: Session 3 – Exploration in Depth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Possible resources:
1) Internet exploration. Information is vast and often based on opinion.
2) Project Look Sharp’s Kit:
Media Construction of the Middle East - Unit Two: Israel and Palestine
http://www.ithaca.edu/looksharp/?action=middleeast
Possibilities for other Lessons: “Poetry and Social Change”**
Geography connections: find the places mentioned in the poem on Google Earth or on a world map.
Discuss:
Literary theme. Discuss what the poem means. A theme is an idea about the human experience, not a single word like “freedom.”
For example, the theme may be best stated as: “If our minds are free, human-made prisons cannot suppress or contain our imaginations.”
Literary elements: repetition & pattern, verse form, rhyme, rhythm, figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification).
Class activity: Whole-class memorization of “The Prison Cell” with emphasis on the pleasure of memorization and recitation.
School wide activities: Performance of poem for the school; creation of poetry wall in school hallway consisting of favorite poems of students & teachers; students help teacher post poems in lockers & faculty mailboxes.
Poetry in Translation: Students translate the work of poets from their native country or ethnic heritage, then write and translate their own poems. Cross-disciplinary potential with foreign language teaching staff.